ABC and PBS Dominate News / Documentary Emmys

ABC and PBS walked off with nearly half of the 44 Emmy Awards for news and documentary programming handed out in New York on Wednesday night.

ABC programs and personnel won 11 of the golden statuettes, including four for “PrimeTime Live.” PBS captured 10 awards.

The awards, handed out by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, covered programming broadcast in 1992. CBS won seven Emmys, TBS got six, NBC came away with four, CNN and ITN (via CNN) collected two each and cable’s A&E; and Discovery channels won one each.

All six of TBS’ awards were for the series “National Geographic Explorer,” which was cited for investigative journalism, historical programming and background/analysis.

Two ABC entries shared the spotlight for best program providing coverage of a single breaking news story: “Nightline,” for an installment last November called “72 Hours to Victory: Behind the Scenes With Bill Clinton”; and a documentary, “Peter Jennings Reporting: Who Is Ross Perot?”

A “48 Hours” edition called “The Heroin Connection” was named best program providing coverage of a continuing news story. The CBS newsmagazine also won for investigative journalism, for an installment called “Bad Medicine.”